Rescuing the dead

Back in 2001, Douglas Speirs, Fife Council's archaeologist, received an application from a local developer to build houses on some farmland on the outskirts of Leven. While doing his research into whether the site contained anything of archaeological interest that should be investigated prior to any development, Douglas found that a cist burial had been discovered on the site in the mid-1940s. A cist is a Bronze-Age stone-lined pit, like a small chamber, into which dead people were interred.

Following a further evaluation of the site, Douglas found that the development area contained not one, but possibly eight individual cist burials collected into what looked like a prehistoric cemetery. What was this 4,000-year-old site all about? Douglas invited Time Team to lend a hand.

Precious time
With the start of the housing development creeping ever closer, there was even more of a sense of precious time on this dig than usual. With the top soil removed, the site became an open-area excavation: one big trench. The tops of the eight individual cist chambers were quickly revealed just 30cm below the surface.

As the Team got to work excavating the cists, surveyor Henry Chapman started recording the landscape. He soon discovered that the site was contained within an enclosure ditch. The acid soil of the region had destroyed much of the organic evidence, including most of the human remains. From the evidence available, the Team concluded that the people who lived and died here probably settled in the area of the modern town of Leven.

It is thought that many of the burials were of children; and one old man was buried in a cist sealed with a huge stone. The lack of burial goods within the chambers indicates that perhaps these people held organic items in high regard, instead of the usual pottery and metalwork, and that unfortunately these items did not survive the local conditions.

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